Tag Archives: usa

Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Ross’s Geese, Foggy Pasture

February 10, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Ross’s geese take off from a foggy San Joaquin Valley pasture

I’ve been out to the San Joaquin Valley quite a few times over the past few months, beginning in the last months of 2014, when there were not yet too many birds there, and as recently as a couple of weeks ago, when large numbers of geese and cranes had returned. (This was a bit of a relief, since many wondered where the birds had gone, especially after this string of drought years in California.)

Our visit to the valley on New Year’s Day was especially nice. Not only did a small group of us literally greet the dawn of the new year in the company of thousands of birds, but we were pleased to see the numbers of the birds had begun to increase again. Among them were the Ross’s geese, who appeared in rather large numbers. While the morning fog was still in the air, though thinning enough to let faint sun through, large groups of them had settled in on the pasture land. The birds were constantly coming and going, as new groups arrived and others left, and as they moved one spot to others nearby, often for reasons that I could not discern. In this photograph the large group still on the ground was in the process of leaving, with a new group taking to the sky every few moments.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

The Aspen Palette

February 9, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Colorful eastern Sierra autumn aspen groves along US 395.

This is another photograph from a few years back that I rediscovered while reviewing many, many photographs for a project that I’m working on. I made the photograph in mid-October along highway 395 in the eastern Sierra, where the autumn colors had finally worked their way down from the higher regions toward the valleys. This large grove of aspens is a fall favorite of mine. The sub-grove extend mostly from left to right across the scene, and the genetically related trees of each group seem to change colors at different times and to end up with different coloration — and when my timing is just right and the season cooperates, almost the entire palette of possible aspen colors can appear here at once. In this photograph we have brilliant reds at the bottom of the frame, blending through orange toward yellow/gold, with a few still-green trees and even a few that have lost most of their leaves.

As I worked on this photograph recently I realized that I made it at a time that seemed much different in California. The two preceding winters had brought record levels of precipitation, the high country had opened late with snow remaining much later than usual, and there was water everywhere. This October visit to the eastern Sierra came near the end of the second wet summer, and it looked like we were about to be in for another wet winter, with early season storms. Then the tap was shut off, and we experienced three years are terrible drought. These trees and others in the range are now under a great deal of stress, and the past autumn was a bit of a strange one. And now, in the fourth year, the Sierra is still experiencing far below normal snowfall and far above-normal temperatures.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Fading Autumn Color

February 8, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Eastern Sierra aspen trees near Conway Summit transition from full color to bare trunks

As I’ve worked on a project recently, I have been going through virtually almost all of my photographs of Sierra Nevada fall color, and along the way I have rediscovered photographs that I had forgotten or, in some cases, never really looked at seriously before. I know many photographers who have this same experience of wondering why they missed certain images when they made them, and then only “found” them much later when revisiting their archives. (I have some theories about how and why this happens, but I’ll save them for another time.)

There are some bands of aspens running up a narrow valley in this area of the eastern Sierra. I had seen them many times before but either they were not in the right condition, in poor light (their location makes light challenging), or I was unable to stop. On this particular visit I managed to find a place from which to view them, and the trees were at that wonderful stage when some leaves are in peak color but others have fallen, and the beautiful white trunks become more visible.

Photographs: Abstract, Photographs: Central California, Photographs: Flight, Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Wildlife

Geese, Twilight

February 4, 2015 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Abstract photograph of low-flying flock of geese in twilight

It has been a while since I share a fuzzy goosescape, so I’ll try to make up for it with this one. Late in the evening of a long day photographing migratory birds and the San Joaquin Valley landscape, after the sun had set, I made this last photograph of the day in very low light. As we photograph on into the evening — typically with the camera off the tripod when photographing birds — we try to keep up with the fading light by opening up the aperture, raising the ISO, and gradually lengthening the shutter speed.

Eventually there comes a point where the light is so low that this won’t allow sharp photographs of moving birds any more. I actually look forward to this end-of-the-evening time and I happily switch over to intentional motion blur photographs. I lower the ISO, close down the aperture, lengthen the shutter speed and try for soft, blurring photographs. A lot of this work is rather experimental, since you can’t completely know what you’ll get ahead of time. You do have some control — shutter speed controls just how much blur there will be; by panning the camera you can get moving subjects to be defined enough to recognize; by moving the camera you can control the angles and curves of lines of blurred light. And when it all works out just right the result can be quite beautiful and, in some ways, more suggestive of the feeling of this place at twilight.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

Tag Archives: usa

Ross’s Geese, Foggy Pasture

The Aspen Palette

Fading Autumn Color

Geese, Twilight

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.